Mario Corner to Corner Afghan

I made this corner to corner afghan for my Mario-obsessed nephew. He recently turned four and loves Mario so much, he dresses up as him – red hat, moustache and all! A corner to corner afghan has been on my to-do list for a while and combined with my love of pixel art, a Mario blanket would make the perfect present for my nephew. Here’s a little clip of the progress:

The blanket is worked in rows diagonally, back and forth. If you’re using a lot of colours, it’s worth using some sort of yarn managing system, otherwise your yarn will get into a real mess. Mario is made up of 14 colours, which I didn’t think was much before I started the project. However, when I reached the halfway mark; the height of my colour changing mayhem, I had 15 bundles of colours going, whole skeins of yarn with both ends being used as well as little spools that I wound around pegs. Needless to say, I spent a lot of time untangling!

Below is the pattern that I created for this project. It’s a combination of perler and cross stitch patterns of Mario that I found online and changed to my liking. Each pixel is made up of four double crochet clusters. Normally one pixel equals one cluster, but as there wasn’t many pixels to work with, I increased the clusters so that the final result would make a decent sized blanket.

I worked off the screen at first but found it much easier to follow after printing the pattern out and taping it on the wall in front of my work station. You can also mark off the squares as you go along, just like a cross stitch pattern.

It’s not bad for my first attempt at the corner to corner stitch. I made mistakes and undid many a row. I stuffed up two pixels on the eyes too. If it weren’t so obvious, I wouldn’t have bothered fixing it, but come on! The eyes?! I didn’t actually realise until six rows later and I didn’t have the patience to undo the rows this time so I chopped out the two pixels (four double crochet clusters), and managed to figure out how to weave the correct colours in. Phew! I can now add “qualified crochet surgeon” to my skill set.

The final blanket measures approximately 102 x 82 cm.

Now all the blanket needs is a good wash before it goes to it’s new home.